For too long I’ve fallen into the wonderful laziness that came from finishing my final year at school as pretty much a part time student, and now working leaves me my evenings and weekends open. Unfortunately for me I’ve been making poor choices about what to do with that time.

I’m going to start actually forcing myself to get up out of bed in the mornings. Earlier for work, and not late into the morning on the weekends regardless of how tired I am. I’m committing myself to acting as if I were still swimming competitively and didn’t matter whatsoever how tired you were, you HAD to swim.

This MIGHT be me soon

So what’s the matter if I’m a bit tuckered out during the weekday? So what if I CAN sleep for 12 hours on the weekend. I don’t need to at all and I know my body will thank me for it. I’ve never been in worse shape, I’m honestly in the worst shape I’ve ever been in my whole life so I’m making a promise to myself to change that! I actually went for a run tonight as a first step to being in shape again.

So anyway. In other news! I’m still working away at the mill. Starting to really get some ground under my feet and am working on a couple of projects! So hopefully things will only keep getting better. I’m a really great worker, but sometimes when my superiors don’t explain to me just what needs to get done and assume I know how a paper mill works.. I end up being pretty confused and don’t know what the first step is. BUT like I said it’s getting better and I’m working on a couple of projects, some of which I’ve spear headed on my own so I’m pretty proud of that.

In some other good news Jeff and I have been dedicated to the “only Canadian products” grocery shopping plan and it’s awesome. We’ve started buying some veggies and fruits we don’t normally buy just because they’re from Canada. Last time I told you about the garlic scapes that we bought accidentally that turned out to be really really damn good. Well last trip to the grocery store Jeff came home with Bok Choy (from Ontario!). We’ve been experimenting in trying to cook them in some delicious way but they seem to be pretty simple. Relatively bland but really versatile. You can kind of do anything with Bok Choy.

Moving on, I worked over the weekend for someone else at the mill. I actually volunteered! How about that?
So I was doing a job that’s not at all like my daily job but is part of a routine schedule through the year. I have to do a couple of weekends through the year but in exchange for the more or less two half days the weekend requires you take a ‘comp’ day off the next Friday (typically, but you can take it whenever). SO this is all leading up to my most exciting bit of news; I’m going home this weekend for 10 days!!!
I’m taking Friday off, and the whole next week. I can’t wait. Going camping with my dad and brothers, and then again with my friends (I think, plans are still in the making), and I’m hoping/assuming I’m going to drink my body weight’s worth of wine.

If any of you know how the Australian school semesters are set up, you might be wondering why I was going down on the 20th of January (for those who don’t know how the semesters are set up, the first semester didn’t start until the beginning of March, ending in June, so January was a touch early).

Well! I had my flights booked more than a month early simply because I had a credit with Air Canada that was about to expire so I had to make the most of it. This early departure ended up being quite a mixed blessing…

When I first got to Melbourne, I got picked up at the airport by the mother and son who lived in the house I was renting out of. I set up my living situation before I left by finding myself a house that was renting out rooms online with melbournehomestay.com (or something like that if that’s not the actual site..). ANYWAY. The mother and son picked me up, holding a sign that said “Brian”, that felt nice actually; after spending about 19 hours in an airplane, knowing that I was slowly distancing myself from all of my friends and family for the next 6 months had been a difficult concept to grasp and made the trip a little bittersweet.

Katherine and Declan (the mom and son) drove me to their (our) house from the airport in their box on wheels and what I saw on the way was NOT what I expected. I guess I thought Melbourne would be a bit more ‘big city’ like, or at least resemble something like Montreal. What I found out later was that it kind of is.. I just wasn’t in the ‘city’ yet…

Very close to where I lived: Fitzroy

The City

The house I was staying in was had the potential to be nice! It was big, lots of space, balconies, some super nice furniture, 2.5 bathrooms… but Katherine was just not ready to rent out her home. There was a HUGE lack of food and my housemates and I (they rented the rooms in the house out to what was originally 3 other people but one moved out and the other got kicked out so it ended up just being two of us) would complain about being hungry all the time together. It was a pretty sore issue when our rent money was supposed to include food.

So I’m living in this relatively nice house, with great housemates and a mother and son who seemed pretty great at first, but they ended up being fairly annoying in the end but it’s all ok because I’m in Melbourne, Australia right?! The weather’s amazing, the neighbourhood is safe, this is going to be an experience! But all I can think about, is how I don’t know anyone. I have nothing to do. The weather is beautiful but I don’t know where the beach is, or where a park is, etc. Turns out there aren’t many beaches near Melbourne and the parks are full of ‘commission housed’ people (which are people who can’t afford housing so the government pays for small apartments for them). So I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do with myself. I have a (now ex) boyfriend telling me that I just need to go to a bar and meet friends, smoke a joint with some people… great advice eh!? It’s not, in case you were unsure.

What I was looking for… (I found this place later)

Now the story DOES take a bit of an upswing for a bit. In order to entertain myself a bit while I’m waiting for school to start and for Maja and Erika (two girls who take Chemical Engineering with me at UNB) to show up here in Melbourne too, I book two day trips to explore a little and hopefully have some interaction with people my age. Next post, recounts on how those trips went! Thanks for reading!